I need to compile these data before my boss gets here, having spent the better part of my morning chatting with my friends about the good old days when life was cheap, only because my parents was spending their money mostly on me, and my brothers, and all had I had to do was wake up very early in the morning though it wasn’t necessary but I could hardly wait to get up, my body itched each second more I lay on that bed, now my body aches every single second that I get out of it. A feeling of satisfaction fills my heart each night, not for a day well spent but for the very reason of knowing that I will be laying on my bed, and not have to make a single movement. But five shilling was a lot of money back in the day; I remember that since that is all my parents used to give me as pocket money daily. I must have been among the richest kids in my school.
I doubt this is the reason that my editor pays me at the end of every month. My assignment was rather simple and interesting, though I truly believed that it was a rather silly one. People’s assumptions on HIV/Aids, I could have easily written that without having to interview university students more so the male students. Plus my editor needed to cut these kids some slack. If they had grown up like me, then they must have known how HIV was spread and the gospel of Abstinence, Be faithful, and Use of Condoms were one that they were familiar with. Anyway how do you get to the University and be ignorant as my editor claimed, of a disease that affected millions of people in this country.
But obedience is better than sacrifice or so they say. I obeyed and these are some of the responses I got, at ‘The’ University. Apparently the article ‘the’ is a big deal, at the university which has state of the art buildings and pavements but the students seemed to hardly have anything nice say about their classrooms neither about the men and women who impact knowledge on ‘tomorrow’s leaders.
Crème De La Crème 1: Everything to do with the fart
This is the way I find out if a girl had an STD. Just make sure I find out how she farts and if she does it at all.
Me: What does that have to with STD’s? You know that sexually transmitted diseases are not spread through farting.
(Hoped he would get the hint from the name itself.)
If she farts and it smells really bad then that proves that she is very healthy.
Me: How do you it? Do you follow her with your head on her butt?
No. Just feed her on a lot of beans, they have to come out at some point.
Crème de la Crème 2: ‘Thirst is everything’
On the first date I would buy her a sprite, make sure it is a sprite all the other soft drinks may not work as well. Getting her to drink a sprite is very easy; simply don’t ask her what drink she wants. Then after she drinks it, I wait for her stomach to rumble. If it does then I know she has an STD or even HIV/Aids.
Me: What if she was just hungry, her stomach rumbles a lot. I am sure yours does the same when you are hungry.
This works you know, the rumbling that her stomach produces is distinct, because no normal person ever produces such a rumble.
Me: Why not get tested or observe the ABC’s of HIV/Aids.
Well, we are getting there but presently there is always a simple way of not getting infected.
Me: Does that work for sure?
My friends claim that it does and they are not infected.
Me: How do you know? Have they been tested? Have you been tested yourself? Are your friends medical doctors anyway?
(Getting rather touchy and emotional, not good for the job.)
No. But at times when you get tested even if you are negative you might test positive and I don’t feel sick, why get tested.
I am not supposed to judge right? But aren’t these were supposed to be the crème de la crème of the Kenyan society, our future leaders, surely they were intelligent to know that a shower wouldn’t cut. That seems to explain why the rates of infection in institutions of higher education were high. It did make me rather angry.
Crème de la Crème 4: What size are you
The HIV/aids virus hides in the waist, more so of women, if a girl has a small waist then wouldn’t even touch her. If you know a person who has the virus then you know that their waist is very small.
Me: How many do you know who have small waists? You know having a small waist is very fashionable today.
Like a mosquito’s that is not normal my dear. Anyway if you are walking around town and see all these women who have really small waists, do not be deceived. They have it.
His was more like an observation exercise, though he needed to get to the lab and get the data he needed to prove his hypotheses.
Crème de la crème 5: Hair?
Try and pull off a strand of their hair if it breaks then you should know that she has the virus.
Me: My hair breaks off all the time.
(I wasn’t trying to scare him away.)
It needs to be pulled, can I?
Pretty sure the interview must have added at that point, never knew that hair pulling could be so sensual.
Crème de la crème 6: A pinch of…
I knew my girlfriend was not infected because when she lay down on my bed in Hall 24 in campus I pinched her stomach and immediately it went back to being flat.
Me: How else would it go?
Remain up for a couple of seconds then I would have been very suspicious of her. You know it’s not everyone who claims to be a virgin is a virgin, especially in such a country where damaged goods are unacceptable.
I did not nod in agreement. It’s not like I understood what he had said to me.
Me: Yes but why not visit a VCT, its more safe and secure.
When I decide to tie the knot, you can be the counselor if you want.
It was clear to me. I was the ignorant one. I was a social scientist at least that is what my degree claimed I was trained in. How then could we get eradicate this disease if we had no idea of such superstitions. For some they were real to them to others these were some of the beliefs on how not to get infected that they had heard from their friends.
Crème de la crème 6: Body size, smoothness of face
Finally the all familiar idiot, I had almost given up hope of finding such.
I am an African man and I know the natural shape of an African woman regardless of where she is from Africa. So if she doesn’t have the weight or the shape, and she is African then she must be having that disease.
Me: Why not get tested? It is easier.
Seemed like it was for the one thousandth time that I was asking this question, somehow it all made sense to me, not how they all worked for the good of society but the missing link in the fight against HIV/Aids. I could see a small flicker of light at the end of the tunnel.
I have but it’s good to know that there are other alternatives.
Hey. I could smile as I moved to the next interview. Not such an idiot I suppose.
Crème de la crème 7: Just a glimpse…
It’s that simple, if someone doesn’t have an arm, you can see it for yourself. You don’t need to be told. Right?
I was the one asking the questions.
HIV is just as similar. Show me a person and I will tell you as easily as the tea I have every morning sails down my throat smoothly if they are infected. I am yet to be proven wrong as of yet.
Me: have you been tested?
No. Do I look like I need to be tested?
Me: What would you do if your girlfriend asked you to go for an HIV test?
Why? Does she doubt herself? I know myself I do not need a test to tell me something that I already know.
Me: Don’t you care about yourself?
Rules are meant to be broken, aren’t they? I know I am not counselor but an urge to enlighten filled my heart in waves of emotion that I couldn’t control.
Me: You know you cannot prove what you are saying, how can you tell if you cannot prove it by facts.
I gathered a lot of information though I am not really sure I was of help to any these young men, but I do hope that one day as a society we will look back at laugh at our folly. The foolishness of our thoughts and actions and find it hard to believe that we held such beliefs. Then we will have conquered, the greatest obstacle being fear. And I did conceive some to visit the VCT with me so that we could prove their beliefs wrong, though I just ended with beliefs when I spoke to them.
Now that’s enough for my journal, let see if I have enough to transform these into an award winning article, here comes the boss and I am as sure footed as a goat he is not interested in my journal.
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Social Matters
1:00 AM
It should have been breaking news! But at 1pm among the news that was broadcast to millions, maybe not, after all, it was supposed to be a working nation, thousands maybe, though to be fair every where around, in workplaces, hotels, homes, banks and even schools had installed really big screens so that everyone had a chance to know, not hear because the volume was always turned low. But they repeated it in the seven o’clock news as well as at nine that evening. It sounded like the police had gunned down another criminal, but he wasn’t a criminal, so they said, he was a young man who had just completed his studies at a local public University, a political scientist he had become. The news reporter, though they didn’t seem to have much to say about him, they did mention he was a political activist whom fellow university students claimed to have rubbed the ruling class the wrong way. But what could a twenty five year old young man from an unknown village have done to be gunned down in cold blood right in the centre of the city after addressing university students not to riot over lack power but to do it for ‘POWER’ they had to change a nation.
“Death threats again!” Maka exclaimed at his good friend of over four years.
Maka and Ochieng had met at the University as freshers (First years). On that first day as they were registering to be students of what was thought to be a great university, a great friendship was formed. Ochieng was a passionate politician and Maka joined his bandwagon right from the beginning.
His cause was largely unknown in the country, let alone in the University. Mismanagement of students’ funds in the University, that’s where it all began. Each year the students at the public institution were required to pay a small sum of two hundred shillings, which when multiplied by the thousands of students that the higher institution claimed to have, translated into millions that a students’ body mismanaged, with no one to audit how the money was spent. He felt incensed, as he began a campaign to educate the students on their rights, especially when it came to demanding an audited report on how their money was spent. The more he fought against them, the more he realized there was a greater power that he was fighting against. The student leaders had the support of the ruling class, that’s how they managed to drive around in state of the art vehicles and maintain their expensive lifestyles. An intricate web of corruption where if you break off the chain at any point it would rattle up to the top, they warned him nicely.
It was a government set on destroying its people. Ignorance is bliss indeed, especially if you are on the receiving end. It was through the ignorance of the people, a weakness that the leaders had readily and willingly exploited. Money meant for equipping hospitals, fighting malaria and HIV/aids was divided in terms of billions to the key players in the government, children crammed in tiny classrooms and in some areas under trees, yet the money that could have made their lives better ended up in the hands of the few, no questions asked. How could they ask what they did not know? Their ignorance resulted in their poverty.
And they were all in it. It was like they sat down just like the Europeans had done in the scramble and partition of Africa in Berlin more than a century earlier. There were no enemies, the government and opposition leaders, added to the religious leaders of the day, and some of the most powerful and vocal non governmental organizations were all united in greed. Divide and rule, but dine together at the end of the day. Their children attended some of the most expensive schools in the country, together. A chip of the old block, a sort of modern day slavery, where the unsuspecting countrymen and women were sold off to a life of misery, disease, poverty, and endless wars.
In a continent blessed with unparallel natural resources that had caused its owners so much misery. The weapons used were more powerful that biological and nuclear weapons, they knew ‘in unity of the masses, they were bound to fail but in division their cause of greed was bound to succeed.’ Negative ethnicity was their choice of weapon and wonders it worked. The commander in chief had amassed a personal wealth of close to a billion, not shillings that could not be workable, his wealth could best be measured in dollars.
“They need to know.” Ochieng defended his actions. “And if there are people heartless enough to do these things, there need to be some one who has a heart enough help people.”
“They will kill you.”
“The brave hardly live for long…” He adapted the saying.
And if he lived for long, he knew only silence would buy him time but what an empty life it would be.
The force he was up against made David’s Goliath seem more of a dwarf. His only weapon knowledge, the people needed to know that they had so much power in their hands. That they were being used by the political class and that it was their ignorance that kept them poor. He started with his university, maybe if the country’s best mind could see what was really going on, and then questions would be raised. His meetings rarely attracted a crowd comparable to weight of the issues he wanted to discuss. But he went on, someone had to know.
“Dude, you have got to shut up.” Maka warned finally. “The people at the top will cut you off.”
Thousands of innocent civilians in a great continent had lost their lives in needless ethnic and civil wars. Thousands of African youths were unemployed with nothing to do, yet contracts were easily awarded to the friends of the government. So many youths were abusing drugs which were supplied by the very people that were meant to safe guard their future. Added to the endless number of people who died because of lack of proper and adequate medical care. Keeping quiet was never an option. Nobody was listening but he kept on talking, maybe one day they would stop and listen.
The war he was waging seemed futile, nobody knew him, he would die an unsung hero. Maka wanted to join in the fight but he was scared for his life. They had both received emails from unknown sources; they had reported to the policemen that their lives were in danger.
“You will not win.” A policeman warned them in rather concerned tone. “The people you are fighting against determine everything that happens in this country. Even the police are powerless when their forces are concerned. Just let it go. They determine who breathes and who is food for the worms”
There was no stopping Ochieng, even when his campus girlfriend left him because of the strange men following her at some point, threatening her family at gun point. The emails, then came the phone calls, the calls became men accosting him every where. Though he was scared, he found the strength to go on. It was for the good of the nation. Even though when he died nobody apart from his family mourned for him.
“The threats keep coming but we almost have a breakthrough my good friend.” He emailed Maka promising to lay low. “The students have taken note of all that I have said and they are asking questions. They have invited me to speak on the evils of politics in Africa.” Little did he know that would be the last speech he would give?
After the meeting he headed out into town with Maka in his brand new Toyota. They stopped and both alighted to enter the supermarket because Ochieng felt his throat was dry. He never came out, the gunmen, two, followed him to the very end of the aisle and one shot him severally in the head and chest, in full glare of the customers and eye witnesses as well as the numerous CCTV cameras. The gunmen walked out briskly, faces uncovered into a waiting vehicle and drove off, and the case would later be closed off because of the lack of evidence and eye witnesses.
His death made no sense to the people, though most sympathized with the tragic death of a young man who seemed to have everything going for him. No stories of bravery would be published about him. School going children would probably never hear about him. The press did mention that the death could have been politically motivated but even them they could not fully understand what had just happened. The public would never attend his funeral en-masse. Neither would they ever remember it was for their plight that he had lost his lives. Maybe if they knew, they would have filled up the streets. His heroism would remain: uncelebrated.
His legacy would lie on in the hearts of the few students that demonstrated his death in various public universities, though even those did not last. He was one in a million, a needle in a hay stack in a country that was accustomed to violent crimes.
His death was not in vain maybe one day the country would look back and realize where the struggle all began. In future when the oppressed became liberated, they might remember the young man who gave his life for the very struggle. The unknown revolutionary!!!
Mary. M.Kariuki
